Scars
by Orchid Falls
Summary: Scars aren’t really anything you think about until you can feel them in your hand. kid and the thompsons, soul and maka, black star and tsubaki.


**A/n's: **This started out as a really good idea and didn't work quite how I wanted it to, but well... hopefully it's still enjoyable.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own it and all that jazz.

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**Scars**

Scars aren't really anything you think about until you can feel them in your hand or catch silver against blushed skin. A blemish that goes unnoticed until it's a line against your finger, stark in the moonlight and staring you right in the eyes.

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There are criss-crosses all over the pistols that Kid holds steady in his hands. Lines and indentations that delve into the metal and rub against his fingertips when he pulls the triggers back to line against his palms. Small notches that he notices run along the length of one barrel like a map.

Liz he learns, because otherwise they're identical in shimmering silver; and the older girl wears them like a personal history scattered between them like a novel he doesn't want to crack open for fear it just might break.

A line drags just below her right eyebrow, _a knife nick that ran like a river when it happened (Flow, flow, flooooooow!). _A curious dint in her upper arm that some guy punched into her; _split the skin like a bitch_ – she laughs. Her voice husky and her eyes burning with an anger that he rarely sees now that the two of them run circles around him and spin in his fingers like a clock on fast forward.

Sometimes he catches Patty circling the marks on her sister's skin, a personal and heavy thank you balancing on the tips of her fingers, disappearing into the old wounds as if she can heal each one with the smile that still manages to fly high on her face when they enter into battle.

Kid lives and breathes through the two of them when they fight, his fingers stroking along the marks as if he too can heal the past through his touch and even heavier guilt, even as they line up with each other to protect him from everyone else.

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Maka can almost feel the long, wide scar that nestles just below the thin cotton of Soul's t-shirt. Her fingers trace it when she presses up against his chest, a failure on her part – big and wide and stretching across his skin like a deep, dark chasm. It strikes out at her when she isn't looking, a long chink on the blade of the demon scythe, catching in the light and striking at her eyes any chance that she's likely to forget. Not that she ever is.

There are other marks too, ones that she's less familiar with but just as likely the cause. The thin spindle of a bow that arcs across his spine, hidden neatly in the curve of the scythe when he's her weapon - and she remembers a time when he shuddered like a ripple in her grip, her arm rising like a wave when she struck back and connected with a long knife that had been aiming for her face . The tiny stars that lie across his knuckles; carved into his skin like a blooming flower, the time when he pushed her to the ground, intent on saving her from an axe to the gut.

The small, almost circle that lands just to the left of his hip; bullet wound from a pistol, this one she remembers. The size perfect enough for her to place her littlest finger, filling up the gap in his skin the only way she knows how. Her words whispering into the dip, filling every inch of him with the word sorry, over and over until she can imagine him whole once again, his skin mended and pink, perfect, unblemished.

She is sorry for all that it's worth.

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Tsubaki doesn't scar in the same way that the others do.

Her skin is rich and creamy like velvet and as flawless as the way that Black Star fights himself, perfectly whole as if she was made to be his choice of weapon.

Sometimes he goes searching, grabbing at her arms or tugging on her hands – looking for the scratch that he knows he felt just a week ago when they fought against some punk kid with a killer sickle that was hardly even worth the bother after the fight the two of them put up against him.

He asks her about it one day and hell if he doesn't understand the answer he's given. She is hurt, she says, a slash of a smile torn onto her face. Every time that she isn't quick enough or sharp enough or _good _enough to protect him.

His face lands in a puzzled line and she seizes his hand and holds it up to her chest - and damn if he isn't reddening fast like a hot day in the summer – there's a thousand tiny cuts she says, layered one over the other for all the times that she's failed him. Lines of raw red muscle torn into her memory so that maybe next time she'll be faster in her spin or thicker as a sheet of smoke he can hide in, sharper than the next blade that might snap out to cut at his skin.

Black Star blinks because it's half implying, if he thinks about it, that he isn't the greatest being that ever lived in the universe and ever will. And even more so that she isn't the greatest weapon meant to be at his side.

So he smiles at her; a bright wide grin, his forehead crinkling and his hand still over her heart, fingers almost on the scars that bubble out onto the surface of her skin, clear now as crystal when he looks at her. And he tells her this: that they'll work on it together, become so fast and silent that neither of them becomes hurt in the process.

**End**

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Comments and crit are mucho appreciated.


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